Overview of Thematic Working Groups

Participatory Tools for Democracy

Commons and democracy are intimately linked. This workshop addresses civic participation and ways to foster citizens’ involvement in the production of their cities through engagement with public bodies and direct forms of political action.

Lately, technology and digital tools are integral to these initiatives to enhance democratic processes. This workshop will consider this dynamic and look at the co-production of public policies and projects through digital platforms.

Participants are interested in analyzing changes produced by these new collaborative processes. They have experience in the production of tools and resources such as online maps, collective storytelling, repositories of experiences, and initiatives designed to support political decentralization and co-production, with and without support from political institutions. This work also includes the development of charters, contracts and structures between different urban actors involved in urban commons.around civic causes in this domain, and participate in telecommunications technological projects.

Currencies and financing of commons

This theme promotes currency and finance as fundamental to the commons and solidarity economy. How are alternative currencies and digital tools and platforms at work, and what are the infrastructures and material environments that support communing and collective responsibility in this sphere? The workshop will examine how we can multiply or upscale some of the initiatives, methods, frameworks, and formats that have already been explored locally.

Participants have expressed interest in strengthening networks and collaborative projects, developing tools to develop an economy based on the commons, as well as strategies and methodologies on P2P mechanisms of value assessment and exchange. They have experience in time-banking and various cooperatives, have developed crypto-currencies and mobilized economic resources and human partnerships; contribute to community building, disseminate and create awareness and commitment around civic causes in this domain, and participate in telecommunications technological projects.

Data commons and the collaborative city

This workshop brings together the topics of control of (civic) data and the collaborative economic models that depend on online platforms. There is increasing interest in exploring alternatives that respect data and promote its civic control, taking into account possibilities for different modes of production & collection of this data. In what way can we facilitate data management and control in line with the social common good?

The workshop will take into account how regulations and policies on open source and open data, on the one hand, and those on technology and decentralized infrastructure, on the other, can play a role in facilitating data sovereignty and new forms of local cooperativism.

Moving away from large corporation and capital-led city development, we have to rethink the Smart City model and imagine data commons that socialise the value of data. How do initiatives like guifinet and Fairbnb fit in?  The starting point for the workshop will be recent experiences in Barcelona and Amsterdam.

Embodied productions of commoning: Food, Health, and Leisure

This workshop takes a holistic view of health creation to include also food production and distribution as well as sport and leisure activities. It will address the different determinants of our physical and mental condition, based on social justice, solidarity economy, and respect to biophysical limits of ecosystems. The commons approach underlines the importance of self-organised, locally rooted, inclusive and resilient community networks and civic spaces in order to re-think the practices and the development of public policy-making in this domain.

Participants have experience and are interested in the interrelationship at all points of the journey from “Land to Fork”, including access to land, nutrition, food sovereignty, cultivation, etc.; new forms of distribution, including for recycling; access to medical knowledge and patient-guided health policies and services; democratization of healthcare and self-organization of citizen efforts to reduce bureaucratic hurdles; and reclaiming the field for grassroots sports while challenging norms to inspire new models of recreation.

Law for the Commons

In order to guarantee the protection and development of commoning practices, legal opportunities and tools need to be located and addressed. This workshop deals with the search for these opportunities in relation to pre-existing and potential urban commons projects. This can draw from existing knowledge and institutional analysis in management of traditional commons, as well as contemporary legal practices for local, national and European legislation. It can also investigate instances where these concepts have been applied at the local scale.

These include participants’ experiences in, for example, production of municipal regulations for shared administration, which protects urban commons (squares, gardens, schools, cultural commons, streets, etc.) and compels local governments to collaborate with citizens. Participants propose the generation of platforms to exchange existing knowledge and experiences in legal mechanisms, as well as the production of practical tools to be used at European and local levels in relation with legislation, norms and institutional interaction.

Right to the City (Public Space and Urbanism, Housing, Water & Energy)

This theme brings together different aspects of the configuration of the city: Public Spaces & Urbanism, Housing, Tourism, Water & Energy and Culture. Understanding the Right to the City as a collective and bottom-up creation of a new paradigm can help to provide an alternative framework to re-think cities and human settlements on the basis of social justice, equity, democracy and sustainability. The workshop will discuss processes of commercialization and privatization of public and common goods and resources; how commons can create forms of democratic urban management; and how re-municipalization processes of urban infrastructures can be linked to the commons discourse. It will also consider the policy frameworks for commons that can be implemented, how spaces can be collectively used for the common good and what kind of legal and economic frameworks are needed to stabilize communing practices.

There is a great diversity of experiences and interests within the group. Proposals include trans-local collaboration to develop perspectives on: urban rights, cultural ecosystems for integration within the city, commons-based housing plans, fighting gentrification and damaging tourism, among others. There is emphasis on sharing examples and tools and promoting the connection of practitioners, researches, professionals, and citizens with project initiators and grassroots actors. Participants draw from experiences including the redevelopment of brownfields and vacant properties, the creation of political platforms and public campaigning and engagement, and construction of community gardens and other spaces as learning environments for communing. Given the wide range of interests and backgrounds, for this theme we can also imagine a mix of general discussions and more specific working spaces, to be decided by the participants themselves, either in organizational process before the meeting or in situ.

Solidarity as a commons: Migrants and Refugees

In many countries, migrants and refugees are confronted by very repressive policies, and in some cases violence. In certain places, citizens are responding by getting involved in local activities to distribute food, clothes and other commodities, to provide information about asylum procedures or how to meet basic needs and human rights, to facilitate the inclusion of migrants or refugees in cities and cohabitation between people in neighborhoods, etc. At a time when policies about immigration and refugees in most European countries are inadequate and troubling, these mobilizations are extremely important and sharing experiences is key.

The purpose of this workshop is twofold. First, it aims to share experiences and knowledge about local citizen-developed initiatives to help migrants and refugees across Europe. In addition, the workshop will be an opportunity to discuss solidarity with migrants and refugees as a commons. Themes to discuss include: the effects on policies and policy makers of the production of solidarity by citizens, the modalities of governance among civil society organizations around their initiatives, and the forms of interactions with municipalities around the initiatives of civil society actors.

Participants have experience in local initiatives of solidarity and hospitality with migrants and refugees; are engaged in research and activism on urban commons focusing on migrant rights; or are involved in initiatives like ecovillage movements, commons support for artists at risk, or community social centers that work to develop new forms of participative work and cooperation to build solidarity.

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It may seem odd to think that passionate amateurs, open source hackers, various professionals and ordinary citizens could actually collaborate and produce interesting new ideas. But that is precisely what Medialab-Prado has succeeded in doing in the last eight years. It has invented a new type of public institution for the production, research and dissemination of cultural projects. It is committed to exploring collaborative forms of experimentation and learning that are emerging from digital networks, especially those practices that enact the commons such as free software, hacker ethics, the Internet as an open infrastructure and peer production dynamics. Medialab-Prado serves as a municipal cultural center that promotes commons-based research, experimentation and peer production, especially through its “Commons Lab.”

The model is quite simple: Medialab-Prado acts as a platform where anyone who has an idea can meet other people and form a work team to develop and prototype the idea. Projects developed at the lab vary immensely, as the list above suggests.

The beauty of the Medialab-Prado process is the inclusive invitations to anyone with the knowledge, talent or enthusiasm to develop a new idea. Through different kinds of open calls for proposals and collaborators, teams are often formed to develop projects in production workshops. Each group is an experiment itself in team- and community-building as it blends people with different backgrounds (artistic, scientific, technical), levels of specialization (experts and beginners) and degrees of engagement. Each group, overseen by the promoter of the project, needs to self-organize and arrange the rules and protocols by which the contributions of participants will be incorporated or rejected, and with what types of acknowledgments. This is why Medialab-Prado has been sometimes defined as an incubator of communities – and commons.

At the heart of Medialab-Prado’s “innovation hosting” of projects is its commitment to free software tools and free licensing. This facilitates the local participation of those that want to contribute to the common good. It facilitates online participation as well, and also in the proper documentation of projects, which is crucial in replicating them elsewhere and in tracking the reasons for the success, failure and procedures of commoning experiments.

Since its creation in 2007, the Commons Lab has evolved from a seminar in which members’ unpublished working documents on the commons were discussed, to an open laboratory that invites the participation of any collaborator, including amateurs, academics and professionals, who wish to join a project.

The Commons Lab has been remarkably productive. Its projects include Memory as a Commons,⁸ which explore the collective creation of shared memory during conflicts; guifi.net Madrid,⁹ which imagined and produced a local telecomunications wifi infrastructure that works as a commons; Commons Based Enterprises, which examines recent models of business management that have made contributions to the commons;¹⁰ and Kune, a web tool to encourage collaboration, content sharing and free culture.¹¹

Besides such projects, the Commons Lab has hosted many public debates on commons-related themes involving cities, rural areas, digital realms and the body. It has also made public presentations about projects such as Guerrilla Translation, a transnational curator and translator of timely cultural memes,¹² and Mapping the Commons, a “research open lab on urban commons.”¹³  Guerrilla Translation is a P2P-Commons translation collective and cooperative founded in Spain. It consists of a small but international set of avid readers, content curators and social/environmental issue-focused people who love to translate and love to share. The group seeks to model a cooperative form of global idea-sharing, by enabling a platform and method for opening dialogues. Guerrilla Translation does not rely on volunteers, but on building an innovative cooperative business model which “walks the talk” of much contemporary writing on the new economy and its power to change.¹⁴

Since moving to a new venue in 2013, the Commons Lab has been less active, even as commoning practices and the commons paradigm have played an increasingly important role in other lines of work and projects at Medialab-Prado. In the near future, the Commons Lab is going to reinvent itself as a project and pull together a history of its achievements to date and comprehensive and introductory material for the general public on the commons theory and practice.

Through public policies and institutions that incubate new commons projects, and enable civil society to create value directly, the commons paradigm may allow us to reinvent public institutions. It can engage people more directly, developing their capacities and participation, and providing accessible open infrastructures that require what anthropologist and free software scholar Christopher Kelty calls “recursive publics” – “a public that is constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together as a public.”¹⁵

Medialab-Prado, as a public institution that is part of the Arts Area of Madrid City Hall, tries to advance this point of view. It tries to learn from commons-based practices and apply them in the public realm – sometimes succeeding, and sometimes not. But as an organization committed to commons as a model of governance, Medialab-Prado regards its workshops, convenings and events as an indispensable way to continue this important exploration.

Marcos García (Spain) is Director of Medialab-Prado, an initiative of Madrid City Hall devised as a citizen laboratory for the production, research and dissemination of cultural projects.

Photo by Medialab Prado

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The crisis of the European Union begs for new, unifying and constructive narratives – alternatives to the right-wing populist and nationalist wave getting fiercer every day. A commons approach holds the potential for a unified vision towards an alternative economy, a Europe from the bottom up and an ecological economy and way of life. The idea of jointly stewarding shared resources, community and a generative economy, can find resonance with a diverse range of citizens.

Sophie Bloemen and Nicole Leonard: A relentless focus on markets and growth has blinded us for the loss of social cohesion, rampant inequality and the destruction of the environment. In the perceived need to quantify everything, gross domestic product is used as a measure of social wealth. The commodification of our common resources and even our online behavior can seem limitless. Yet major fault lines are starting to appear in this dominant worldview based on individualism, private ownership and an extractive relationship with nature. A novel outlook based on networks, access and sustainability is emerging, where citizens are actively co creating their environment.

The Commons perspective captures the change in perception regarding needs and priorities. ‘Commons’ refer to shared resources and frameworks for social relationships that are managed by a community. ‘Commons’ also stand for a worldview and ethical perspective favouring stewardship, reciprocity and social and ecological sustainability. This outlook defines well-being and social wealth not just with narrow economic criteria like gross domestic product or companies’ success. Instead it looks to a richer, more qualitative set of criteria that are not easily measured – including moral legitimacy, social consensus and participation, equity, resilience and social cohesion.

Commons are not primarily a political theory but first and foremost a practice emerging from the bottom up. Everywhere people are engaged in alternative practices as part of the struggle for ecological, social and cultural transition within their communities. All over Europe local initiatives are taking care of their direct environment, sharing and stewarding knowledge online, and claiming natural resources as our commons. These include, for instance, community wifi structures providing internet access in remote areas, co-housing initiatives ensuring affordable housing, community land trusts that explore collective forms of property, or urban commons initiatives regenerating the city for its citizens. The digital knowledge commons are a key element of an alternative economy, and online commons projects have been able to attain an impressive scale. Creative commons licenses for cultural works, for example, are now over one billion. In all these areas, the commons approach offers a new vocabulary for collective action and social justice, as well as processes for communities to govern resources themselves.

The Commons to Overcome Political Struggles in Europe

So if commoning communities abound and cultural change is underway, what is stopping the commons from creating an alternative society? Perhaps commoners’ strengths – their localised, bottom-up stewardship of resources and strong community-oriented relationships – are also obstacles. How do we move from a loose network of atomised, emancipatory commoning initiatives to a strong network that can challenge the dominant, bankrupt worldview of individualism and economic growth at any cost?

Until now, European civil society, the NGOs and social justice networks, have not been able to unite around a broad shared agenda. Hundreds of organisations did unite in the fight against TTIP. However, in order to make progress towards another, fairer and ecological economy and society, a movement cannot be solely reactionary – it has to set the agenda and provide positive alternatives.

The emerging radical democratic initiatives that propose alternatives have mostly engaged at a national or local level. Examples are 15M in Spain, Nuit Debout in France or the University occupation in Amsterdam. The Occupy movement was trans-local, but did not succeed in genuinely opening up the conversation in Europe. Municipalism, such as in Barcelona is creating real change on the ground, providing an inspiration for cities not only in Europe but worldwide. Local struggles, forward-looking and emancipatory projects have to be connected in order to truly change the current order. The fact is that a great deal of the laws and developments that shape our societies come from the European level and global markets. There has to be trans-local and transnational solidarity around a shared vision of an alternative society.

The European Commons Assembly arrives to Madrid

The European Commons Assembly is an effort in providing a platform for these connections and trans-local solidarity. The European Commons Assembly that took place in Brussels in November 2016 has been a case in point for the unifying potential of the commons, and a symbol of maturity of the commons movement. A myriad of over 150 commoners, activists and social innovators from different corners of Europe came to Brussels for three days to develop new synergies, express solidarity and to discuss European politics as well as policy proposals. In the European Parliament, Members of Parliament exchanged views with this “Commons Assembly” and the political energy generated by bringing all these people together in this context was exceptional.

The ECA continues today as a political process and diverse platform, open to anyone who shares its values and wants to contribute. ECA explores what strategies to engage in order to nourish, protect, and extend the commons. How to develop the outward channels to affect political change, while taking care to maintain and strengthen its communities? How to build broader coalitions on the ground not bound to the left or the right, how to prevent erecting barriers with academic language and theory?

Since Brussels, the ECA has published a series of videos on commons topics, articles and generally aimed to visibilise the unifying potential of the commons narrative. Members also examined the intersections of the commons and Social Solidarity Economy and municipalist movements, with smaller assemblies held in Athens and Barcelona. Commoners from all over Europe and beyond are joining the online community all the time, and sharing their experiences, and even in the Netherlands and Finland commoners were inspired to create local commons assemblies.

ECA Madrid and the collaboration with Transeuropa 2017 provides the energy to move the process further along. It is becoming clear that the ECA needs to offer an added value beyond ideational affiliation. Assembly members will have to co-create the resources and practices that will strengthen the movement. That is why the idea of “production” figures so prominently in the discourse around this Assembly. The focus of the assembly this time will be on urban commons, taking advantage of ECAs presence in Madrid and Spain to examine strategies, failed and successful, to promote the commons politically and in public policy, including citizens in this process.

In Madrid working groups will focus on specific themes of the commons in the city, to create shareable outputs that bring these local experiences to a broader audience. This creation will nourish the toolbox of the ECA, in turn helping other efforts to support and scale commoning. This opportunity will allow initiatives to learn from and share with each other, attaining a level of technical depth and understanding that is necessary for change, deepening the European political agenda for the commons. At the same time, what is at stake goes beyond the specific themes and issues that color the commons movement.

The ECA aims to engage in conversations with other allies around Europe, and considers the political context and the commons movement as a political force that relates to conventional political power. Rather than letting citizen resentment of the current order and political backlash lead to Europe’s disintegration, the European Commons Assembly builds on these on-the ground experiences to draw hope and energy to power the commons vision and a renewed political force in Europe.

The European Commons Assembly will be in Madrid from the 25th until the 28th of October. The program includes participative workshops on urban commons topics, joint sessions with European Alternatives on the commons in policy, and opportunities to learn about and visit local commoning initiatives in Madrid. There will also be time dedicated to the future of the ECA.

Read and sign the Call: europeancommonsassembly.eu/sign-call/. Join the community: Introduce yourself by email at [email protected] Don’t miss any update! Join our telegram channel: http://t.me/transeuropa2017

Sophie Bloemen is a political activist based in Berlin and co-founder of the Commons Network

Nicole Leonard is the coordinator of the European Commons Assembly (ECA)

Originally published in the TransEuropa 2017 Journal.

Photo by cuellar

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Migration and borders, municipalism and the commons are the axes of a Festival of art and politics that invites dialogue and participation

In conjunction with the Madrid European Commons Assembly, part of the P2P Foundation team will be present at the TRANSEUROPA festival. Come join us!

European Alternatives’ (EA) Biennial Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary from October 25th to the 29th with the ‘Convergent Spaces’ proposal in Matadero Madrid, Medialab Prado, Intermediae, CS La Ingobernable and Centro Centro. TRANSEUROPA proposes a series of conferences, workshops, artistic exhibitions, performances, screenings, concerts and political debates. The thematic axes of this edition address the crisis of European borders, proposes the new municipalism in European cities as a potential agent of change and the commons as a political alternative for new governance.

Organised by EA in collaboration with the Spanish collective Zemos98, the Festival is a counterbalance to the dominant discourses of crisis and threat of the unknown. Through art, culture and innovative practices, TRANSEUROPA proposes spaces for dialogue and learning for hundreds of activists from different European countries for an exchange with local citizens.

Speakers

Over five days more than 50 speakers will participate in TRANSEUROPA. Among them, the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, the philosopher Marina Garcés, Santiago Alba Rico, the Black Lives Matter activist in Denmark, Bwalya Sørensen, and the German Politician Gesine Schwan. German film director Jakob Preuss will present his new film When Paul Came Over the Sea on Thursday 26 at 7 pm at the Cineteca de Matadero, a documentary about the story of Paul’s journey, a migrant from Cameroon who passed through Spain before arriving to Berlin.

Exhibitions, art and thought

In the framework of TRANSEUROPA Matadero Madrid will host the exhibitions Europe as a Refuge and Artivism from the European Margins. Both exhibitions will open in the presence of the artists on Wednesday 25th and Thursday 26th October respectively.

In addition on Friday 27th Audiovisual Source Code will present If I were a black person in a film, by the journalist and president of SOS Racism Moha Gerehou, the live audiovisual performance IDRISSA: Everyday Borders by Metromuster with the Guinean singer Nakany Kanté and a DJ by MotoKiatu, mixing African rhythms with electronic music.

Workshops

Each morning 15 practical workshops will take place, addressing issues of integration and borders (Brexit: building trans-European perspectives or Community Strategies against institutional racism); racism (Top-manta: fight and activism of street sellers in Spain or Stop Islamophobia); feminism, data analysis and visualization, and cybersecurity. Collaborators for these workshops include: Carmen Castro, the collective Eutropian, and Stanislaw Strasburger.

10 years across Europe

Since 2007, TRANSEUROPA has evolved as an artistic, cultural and political festival organized transnationally by European Alternatives. EA is a civil society organization works through its pan-European network throughout the continent to promote culture, equity and democracy beyond the nation state. For the last decade, TRANSEUROPA has operated in a decentralized way, organizing simultaneous meetings in dozens of European cities in parallel to a major festival in a major city. This year, in addition to Madrid, the festival will be present through the TRANSEUROPA OPEN programme in Valencia, Lousame (Coruña), London, Belgrade, Berlin, Montenegro, Ghent (Belgium), Ludwigshafen (Germany), Maribor (Slovenia), Turku (Finland).

Photo by Dave Pinter

The post TRANSEUROPA/Convergent Spaces: alternatives for a Europe in crisis appeared first on P2P Foundation.

For more information about the program, click here.

In cooperation with the Transeuropa Festival and MediaLab Prado, the assembly features 4 days of workshops, visits to local commons initiatives, debates, talks, art and parties in the heart of Madrid. An eclectic mix of commons activists from all over Europe will get together to discuss the commons and the future of Europe.

The European Commons Assembly starts on Wednesday (the 25th of October) and ends with a closing assembly on Friday (the 27th of October). Saturday (October 28th) will be filled with trips to local commoning sites around Madrid and exciting sessions organized by Transeuropa Festival in the afternoon.

Workshop themes include ‘Participatory Tools for Democracy’, ‘Right to the City’, ‘Law for the Commons’, ‘Data Commons and the Collaborative Economy’, ‘Food’, ‘Health and Leisure’, and ‘Solidarity as a Commons: Migrants and Refugees’.

For more updates, follow us here on Twitter or join the event here on Facebook.

We hope to see you in Madrid!

Photo by Tom.Lechner

The post The next European Commons Assembly will be in Madrid on October 25-28 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

So, what about politics? (#SWAP) is a fully packed symposium presenting mainly very concrete projects that deal with new forms of political action and governance in the contemporary network society. With examples from liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation.

From the event website:

So, what about politics? looks at initiatives that could be seen as the avant-garde of a new political era. In a critical period of crisis in our political systems, we welcome artists, activists, academics using innovative technological tools to reclaim political processes or to shape new forms of organisation, from local collectives to global movements.

As  Rebecca Solnit says, “It’s equally true that democracy is flourishing in bold new ways in grassroots movements globally”, and “There is far more politics than the mainstream of elections and governments, more in the margins where hope is most at home.” How does this apply to the margins of our technological imagination? Which tools and practices are being dreamed of, tested and explored?

In short, what is the impact of today’s Internet-inspired post-institutional thinking on the practice of political action? For this we focus on tactics, tools and visions of grassroots initiatives, as well as on changing government policies and strategies.

The symposium revolves around questions such as: What are the politics of a P2P society? How can we perceive a network as a real “distributed agora”? What can we learn from artist- or activist-led experiments focusing on collectivity and political agency?

And most important: What are the concrete tools and initiatives today that really try to facilitate and use new forms of agency such as liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation?

PROGRAMME
Digital culture and technology. But what about politics?

Final Programme coming soon!

Day 1: FRI 3 November
Lectures and Debates, 10:00-18:00

Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation), Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam), Sandrino Graceffa (SMArtbe, Brussels), Xavier Damman (OpenCollective.com), Virgile Deville (Democracy.earth), Saya Sauliere (Medialab-Prado/ParticipaLab, Madrid), Arianna Mazzeo (DesisLab, Barcelona), Khushboo Balwani (Civic Innovation Network, Brussels), David Potocnik (totalism.org, Lanzarote), Lauren Lapige (unMonastery, Athens), Penny Travlou (University Edinburgh), Monica Garriga (Decidim, Barcelona), David Gómez (Texeidora, Barcelona), Emmanuele Braga (Macao, Milano), Panayotis Antoniadis (NetHood, Athens-Zurich), Sanna Ghotbi & Vanessa Metonini (DigidemLab, Gothenburg/Madrid), Barret Brown (PursuanceProject.org, USA).

Day 2: SAT 4 November
Workshops and Participative sessions, 10:00-17:00

Sanna Ghotbi & Vanessa Metonini (DigidemLab, Gothenburg), Arianna Mazzeo (DesisLab, Barcelona),  Civic Innovation Network (Brussels)

Register for Day 1 and take option for Day 2

Credits

The symposium is curated by Bram Crevits (KASK / School of Arts Gent) and Yves Bernard (iMAL.org).
This event is organised by iMAL (Brussels center for Digital Cultures and Technology) in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), Medialab Prado (Madrid) and KASK / School of Arts (Gent).

After the symposium Blockchain.Fact.Fiction.Future in 2016, So what about Politics? continues our exploration of how society can be improved with the digital world.

So what about Politics? is supported by KASK / School of Arts Gent and Saison des Cultures Numériques 2017, Ministery of Culture (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Photo by Artur Netsvetaev

The post So what about Politics? Toward a new political era appeared first on P2P Foundation.

You can still be a part of it: Click here to join.

In cooperation with the Transeuropa Festival and MediaLab Prado, the assembly features 4 days of workshops, visits to local commons initiatives, debates, talks, art and parties in the heart of Madrid. An eclectic mix of commons activists from all over Europe will get together to discuss the commons and the future of Europe.

The European Commons Assembly starts on Wednesday (the 25th of October) and ends with a closing assembly on Friday (the 27th of October). Saturday (October 28th) will be filled with trips to local commoning sites around Madrid and exciting sessions organized by Transeuropa Festival in the afternoon.

Workshop themes include ‘Participatory Tools for Democracy’, ‘Right to the City’, ‘Law for the Commons’, ‘Data Commons and the Collaborative Economy’, ‘Food’, ‘Health and Leisure’, and ‘Solidarity as a Commons: Migrants and Refugees’.

Are you interested in the Commons?
Join us! Click here.

For more information about the program, click here.

For more updates, follow us here on Twitter or join the event here on Facebook.

We hope to see you in Madrid!

Reposted from the Commons Network newsletter.

Photo by Liisa Maria

The post Join us in Madrid for the next European Commons Assembly appeared first on P2P Foundation.

If the past 10 years have been about discovering post-institutional social models on the Web, then the next 10 years will be about applying them to the real world.

(Chris Anderson,2010, www.wired.com)

Text reposted from IMAL.org. Thanks to Bram Crevits for forwarding it.

So what about Politics?

So, what about politics? looks at initiatives that could be seen as the avant-garde of a new political era. In a critical period of crisis in our political systems, we welcome artists, activists, academics, and everyone using innovative technological tools to reclaim political processes or to shape new forms of organisation, from local collectives to global movements.

As  Rebecca Solnit says, “It’s equally true that democracy is flourishing in bold new ways in grassroots movements globally”, and “There is far more politics than the mainstream of elections and governments, more in the margins where hope is most at home.” How does this apply to the margins of our technological imagination? Which tools and practices are being dreamed of, tested and explored?

In short, what is the impact of today’s Internet-inspired post-institutional thinking on the practice of political action? For this we focus on tactics, tools and visions of grassroots initiatives, as well as on changing government policies and strategies.

iMAL wants to invite its guests to look beyond the often-perceived neutrality of technology and unveil underlying narratives. The symposium revolves around questions such as: What are the politics of a P2P society? How can we perceive a network as a real “distributed agora”? What can we learn from artist- or activist-led experiments focusing on collectivity and political agency?
And most important: What are the concrete tools and initiatives today that really try to facilitate and use new forms of agency such as liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation?

OPEN CALL

Digital culture and technology. But what about politics?

This is an open call for contributions by artists, activists, technologists, designers, researchers, citizen initiatives, collectives or groups to the symposium ‘So, what about politics?’.
The event will be held on November 3-4, 2017 in Brussels at iMAL, the Brussels-based center for digital cultures and technology.

Send your proposal to [email protected]
Deadline: September 1st 2017

This Open Call is not restricted to specific kinds of contributions. You can send us proposals for a lecture, workshop, performance, installation… Day 1 of the symposium will be focusing on lectures and presentations. Day 2 is reserved for participatory activities such as Open Assembly Lab or Workshops.

Proposals will be selected according to their relevance and feasibility (logistics, budget).

Credits

The symposium is curated by Bram Crevits in collaboration with Yves Bernard (iMAL.org).
This event is organised by iMAL (Brussels center for Digital Cultures and Technology) in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), Medialab Prado (Madrid) and KASK/School of Arts (Ghent).

After the symposium Blockchain.Fact.Fiction.Future in 2016, So what about Politics? continues our exploration of how society can be improved with the digital world.

So what about Politics? is supported by Saison des Cultures Numériques 2017, Ministery of Culture (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Photo credits: cjohnson7 from Rochester, Minnesota (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0]

Photo by Bilderwense

The post So what about Politics? – Call for contributions appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The call to participate in the Madrid workshops will be open until August 4th.

• Form

The European Commons Assembly was launched in November 2016 with public events that took place in several spaces in Brussels, Belgium, including the Zinneke social center and European Parliament. This meeting gathered from different parts of Europe more than 150 commoners to promote public policies for the commons at the European level and to develop mutual support networks that enable long-term sustainability..

The call to participate in the Madrid workshops will be open until August 4th. Proposed topics related to the urban commons include:

• Public space
• Migrations and refugees
• Citizen participation in urban politics
• Culture
• Food
• Housing
• Health
• Currency and financing for the commons
• Laws and legal mechanisms to protect the commons
• Technology for citizenship.

You may also propose a topic not already on this list; fill out the form to propose the organization of a specific workshop, and/or to participate in any of the workshops that you find interesting.

Each workshop will be co-organized by both a local and an international community project around the proposed topic. Workshops will be coordinated to offer valuable knowledge and strategies to apply to other, ongoing experiences. To this end, the ECA Madrid coordination team will hold several video conferences to connect the different initiatives and develop the workshop contents prior to the meeting. Workshops will employ facilitation methodology designed to guide the coordination team members in structuring and eventual documentation of the contents generated.

When completing the form, you may indicate if you need the organization to cover travel and / or accommodation if it will not be possible to cover these expenses another way. For more information, contact nicole.leonard [at] sciencespo.fr.

You can find more information on the European Commons Assembly website or fill out the form.

Photo by Ultra-lab

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Rich: I have been tracking these movements for five years now. They turn up, they learn something, they do something, people have an experience and then the moment expires. The progress goes underground where it can’t be seen.

So assuming the worst case scenario: Nuit Debout is going to do that next week, it’s going underground. The moment of consciousness is no longer on the public radar, then what would be the best outcome after that happens? For this network of people and their enthusiasm? How do you prevent that from being a defeat?

What I saw with Occupy Wall Street, was a golden moment that over time, as history is being written, history is constricting around what was a victory, and rewriting it as a defeat. That’s so discouraging for the participants!

If we can predict that is going to happen in France, what’s the resilient strategy against that enclosure?

Baki: Seriously I don’t know. I think for me, the only success, the outcomes are: to have people meeting everyday to talk about serious stuff, taking the time to discuss their problems in the most inclusive way possible. It is more inclusive than we could ever have imagined. I don’t say it is without flaws, there are many flaws, but this is the first outcome. From there, movements in France will never be the same again. As a long-term activist, I think this is the first outcome.

The second outcome, and this is the fight I have about digital, most of the people participating in this movement and in politics, most of the people ready to fight locally and engage, the outcome I wish for, is not a party in power. If there were a party called Nuit Debout in power, that would be a failure for me.

For me, my wish is a generation of people, in a party or not, that are ready to take the armor to come again in the streets, and say, “Now you stop this!” If we can build awareness, that is the best outcome.

What these people are doing, building Podemos France, is some stupidity. You take something that has happened in another country and try to replicate it. The guy who leading Podemos France is a political scientist. I’m like, guys, innovate!

Rich: I have a theory, looking at the individual level, not at the movement level: these movements are encouraging for people. If you think of encouragement, like taking someone and dipping them in a bath of courage, now you have courage soaking into you and you have been en-couraged. After the movement has passed, there are all kind of things that will dry you off and make you dis-couraged. So the question is, how do you maintain that encouragement and actually strengthen it over time, once the moment has passed? Once the historical forces have shifted?

What I’m seeing is that some individuals can do it. Individuals that have participated in movements 5 years ago, they’ve still got the courage. I think what it needs is to take that view of: what do I need to maintain my courage? I need a job that doesn’t discourage me. I need to live in a way that doesn’t discourage me. There’s a translation from the political action to the economic reality. How do I participate in this economy on my own terms? How do I turn this solidarity I feel in the movement, into food, shelter and clothing and all the stuff I need to be a human. I think that is the job for the movement.

Baki: I don’t have recipes, but I know if this movement continues in an inclusive way, the outcomes will be for generations. If this movement becomes a party, the outcomes will be diminished.

[…]

Rich: I’m doing what I always do: taking my experience and then projecting it onto the rest of the world. My experience at Occupy was amazing, change my life, but afterwards: then what?

I was forced to reckon with this question of how should I live now, having had that experience? What choice is left to me? The only choice left to me was to build a livelihood that was based on the same principles and values of the movement. I had enough friends that we have made that happen. So far. We haven’t taken a wage from anywhere else.

And we have met other people doing the same thing. So Loomio lives inside of Enspiral, which is 300 people. A network of people that is working according to those values, it operates democratically, working on projects that they think are making a positive contribution to the world.

Say you’re working in communications, you do a contract, get paid $10,000, then you choose some fraction of that to voluntarily share with the collective. Maybe 20% if it has been a good month, or 0% if you are broke. Anyone in the collective can propose how to spend the money. You get to allocate the contribution you’ve made. So you might say, ‘I love Rich’s project, I’ll give my $2k to fund his project.’

So internally we have this networked economy where people are earning a livelihood for themselves and supporting each other’s projects. Now we’ve reached a level where we’re starting to meet the other networks like us. There’s a little community in Germany, one in France, North America…

My experience of Occupy, which I wonder if it is similar to Nuit Debout, is that people in the movement have an allergy to business. As soon as you start talking business, they dismiss you as a capitalist. I want to short-circuit that. You can be in business without being a capitalist. I’m an anti-capitalist. We have an anti-capitalist business. Loomio lives in the commons. We take private money and use it to fund the development of the commons. I don’t have an ownership stake in Loomio, it lives in the commons. That’s a subtlety that you’re not necessarily going to get to in a General Assembly.

Baki: The outcomes are immediate. Maybe you would not have thought of Loomio if you didn’t participate. This is one of the biggest outcomes. If one day, out of this movement, people can make new tools, different companies, cooperatives, that is good! I would like that! For me, the worst thing that can happen is a party.

Rich: I agree. Have you heard of OuiShare Festival? It was an ambiguous event, but the conclusion was unambiguous, which was great. Yochai Benkler made this call to people in the room. He said, you people that want to start companies? Great, this is what I need you to design into these companies: they have to be ethically coherent, don’t delay your ethical commitment, build your ethics into your business model. Don’t make compromises on your ethics. Number two: they have to be for the commons, you have to build the commons into your business model as well. Number three: they have to be centered in social relationships. Not hierarchical. As Audrey said, not working for, but working with. He said, if you do those three things, build all the companies you want.

That’s the kind of directive I want to see come into the movements. Where people can say, we have a problem with the capitalist, but we don’t have a problem with work. We are happy to work. The problem is how we work.

Baki: I’m against jobs. But I’m for work.

You need to work with people who are there today. The movement is not there today. I don’t think it will be there soon. The movement is very particular, every day people come and some people leave. It’s good. The people who arrive today, they need to take the first step. For them, that is good, take the first step. That’s not a problem.

You have to try to organise this with people that are already there.

What is possible in France, culturally, is to prove by showing that things work. France is a country of speeches. We are not a country of actions. When you make actions, you can show people, what are you waiting for? If you succeed, we want to be in the storytelling. If you have this project, think of it in an incubator. Incubate it in the movement, and when it works, it goes out of the incubator.

Rich: This is the thing about social relationships, too. Since we started Loomio, every movement has used Loomio. We have social relationships with people in the movement. If you think there is something wrong in the code or in the implementation, if you think we are doing something sneaky, you have the leverage of this social relationship. You can say ‘Richard, why are you doing it this way?’ If I can’t win your trust as a human, directly, then it doesn’t take long for all the movements to stop using Loomio. So we maintain that accountability through a social mechanism.

Intergenerational culture change

Baki: My parents are from the ’68 generation. The richest generation in France. When they were my age they already had 5 children, a house, and saved money. I have no child, no money, and an apartment.

So 5 years ago I started couch surfing. One day, my parents stayed at my home while I was in Tunisia, during the revolution. They took the key from the doorman, and I told mum, there’s a girl coming from Brazil tomorrow, don’t give the keys to the doorman, the girl will meet you.

She says, ‘Oh you never presented her to us!’ I say, ‘Yeah, you can present yourself to her.’ She says, ‘But if she is your friend, you have to present her!’ I said, ‘I don’t know her.’

She was silent. What? You don’t know her? – No. – Why is she staying in your house? Have you ever met her? – No. – Do you want me to stay!? – No. – Are you going to leave her in your house alone? – Yes. – How is she going to manage to live in your house alone? – I sent her an email explaining how everything works. She’s a big girl. – Are you not afraid of things disappearing from the house? – I said, mum, like what? What is the thing in my house that can disappear.

The only things that have value is the crystal glass that I inherited from grandma. I use them everyday to drink bad wine with activists, we have broken already half of them.

I said, ‘Mum, do you think a young girl from Brazil that is making a European tour, will steal my glasses? To do what?’

Afterward my dad said, ‘the difference between your generation and ours is what you give value to.’

He reminded me, when I was young, I had a bicycle, and I had a friend that didn’t have one. One day I asked dad, next Christmas, I’d like Santa to bring me a bicycle. He said, you have one already. I said yes, but I have to give mine to someone else.

That bicycle was so cool, so he didn’t want me to give it to my friend. So he bought a new bike for my friend. So finally I gave my Christmas bicycle to someone else again!

I discussed with my dad, I have less money than they had, but I’ve visited 100 times more countries than them. First of all, I don’t care about goods. When I wanted to visit Spain the first time, I was 17 years old. My parents said I had to work to do that. I said No, I’m not going to work, I’m going to Spain. So I visited Spain for free. For them it was the craziest thing I could have done.

We’re in a generation, a social network with obligation in the beginning, and now it has become a strength. When I am in Madrid, I’m here, I’m not from Paris. And when I’m in Paris, I’m from Paris. It’s becoming an advantage.

In the social movement too. People I met in Tunisia, or Egypt… I met Toret, we’d never met before but we had so many stories in common. I was so happy to see him physically. We were instantly like very old friends. We’ve been working in the same movements without seeing each other. This is an advantage.

Emergence of digital nationhood

Rich: This has been the summary of my trip. This is my first time in Europe. We’ve been here a couple of weeks. It’s obvious at Nuit Debout especially. The ‘digital native’, the ‘global citizen’, that is literally a native, it’s actually a nation. Global citizens have active citizenship there. Citizenship and nationhood have culture, the culture is different from French or German culture, it’s nonlocal.

Some people in the movement have that culture, some people don’t. That’s the profound clash. The job of the movement, the reason you keep coming together, is because you’re trying to impart your culture from one person to the next.

We have all the technology, that’s great. But I think it still only happens one-to-one, face-to-face. I can hold it and I can pass it to you. And you can pass it on to someone else.

This thought developed into the talk I gave at the D-CENT conference two days later:

Baki: Yes! This is how we are solving it. For example. The media centre is not in Place de République. Why? Because we don’t want the police to take our computers. We need a good internet connection, and electricity.

The first criticism was: you are never there. You are hackers.

We started making a weekly meeting in the Place. People started coming, we started discussing. It’s going cool, more and more now.

Even in the media center, we are digital natives. In general, digital natives think the world outside digital is stupid.

Rich: That attitude makes you stupid. I’ve been dealing with the stupidest people, telling me how blockchain is going to fix every problem. You don’t know about code but I can tell you this much: the blockchain is a database. That’s all. A database is not going to fix power inequality. It will make new affordances, we can do things differently, but it doesn’t fix things by magic.

Baki: They asked me to give a lecture in a university in Paris about how Facebook made the revolution in Tunisia. I went to see the professor and said, I can’t make your lesson. Facebook did not make the revolution. Political scientists want to learn how Facebook caused the revolution. But it didn’t happen! So I couldn’t teach that class.

Sometimes we have to meet. On the other hand, you have to prepare the closing time of the meeting, because people will troll you. You need a bounded time.

I don’t believe there will be a new movement today, without digital. Even in Saudi Arabia.

Rich: My question is, if it is a new culture coming through, what’s the most effective transmission of that culture? I think it happens down a thousand channels.

I remember when I had my first experience of Google Docs, sitting next to my buddy, the two of us writing on one document. It shifted something in my brain: these words are not my own, these words are ours. It changed the way I relate to the job of writing. The same with Twitter. You have this experience where you say something and 5000 people repeat it. That shifts your identity. I want to know which are the tools that shifts people’s identity in a positive direction.

Baki: I think they are not only mass consumer tools. Also small tools, for example, during this movement, what shifted my mind, I’ve used all the tools, I’ve been in Tunisia, I’ve seen the crowd shouting in Spanish. You see how a global movement can work. But the day that I was surprised: one day was Orchestra Nuit Debout.

Musicians from Orchestra Nuit Debout hold their instruments aloft

I played classical drums for 9 years. When I started being an activist, saying that I played classical music was a secret. When this guy published in Facebook that we want to make a concert in Place de République, three hours later there were 300 musicians saying, yes we want to play with you and 12 conductors.

They really played! They played the new world. The second movement is very cold, normally played on piano. The chief conductor, who is a woman, decide to play this with violins and drums. But she decided that two hours before! When you come from classical music, you say, what is she doing? All these parts are played in piano, and you’re making us play it with violins and drums!?

It was so powerful!

There was too much noise to hear piano. My brain shifted. I thought classical music was one way, then a woman (and there are not many women conductors), can decide in two hours to make something cool. She did it! It shifted my mind. That’s no tech. One person with her experience, she said, we’re going to do it this way. We have electric pianos but you won’t hear them out here, but if we put all the violins and all the drums, because a piano is percussion! It’s hammer on strings! So she said, just go with that. Everyone was looking at her sideways, we’re going to do that? They tried, and they did it!

Rich: This is what happens when you put someone else in charge. They do things differently!

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